How many ridges are there around a penny

Before the introduction of reeding, small amounts of gold or silver from coins could be chiseled or shaved away and the precious metal sold again or remelted and made into another coin. The slang usage of the world chisel may even derive from this ancient practice. While quarters and dimes are no longer minted from silver, with the exception of special collectable quarters , the ridges remain. Come in a take a look at the exhibit - you will find it in the first floor gallery.

What else can you learn during Money Smart Week? Preschoolers will have a visit from Ben Franklin for the preschool story time Thursday morning, April And if you want to know more about estate planning, the library has a program tailor made for you. Skip to main content. Catalog Website New catalog Search.

Other European coins from as far back as the early s also feature reeded edges. Coin clipping is no longer a problem, but reeded edges are still around, a centuries-old security measure hanging on in an age where people pay for things with their smart phones instead of digging out pocket change.

The tenacity is admirable. But why are they still there? Coins are made by stamping coin blanks with a metal tool called a die. When the coins are struck, a part of the die called the collar holds the blank in place and applies the edge. Newer coins with updated designs state quarters, new portraits also have reeded edges.

The design element lived to see another day on the new dies because reeding is useful for distinguishing coins by feel as well as appearance, making them more user-friendly for the visually impaired. If you gather up a bunch of coins, you'll see that not all reeded edges are created equal. The number and size of reeds on coins is not dictated by law, so individual U.

Mints were long free to make their reeds to their own in-house specifications, leading to distinct style differences between coins from different mints and eras. The dimes made by the Philadelphia Mint in those same years have thin, tightly-spaced reeds. As such, forgers had a field day. Since English coins varied so widely in size and quality, it was easy to pass off even the most sloppy knockoffs as legal tender.

Riots broke out as faith in the English currency plummeted. By adding an identifiable feature to the edges, clippers could no longer remove part the coins subtly. Anyone receiving the clipped coin would, nearly instantly, know that it was manipulated. So, why do the penny and nickel not have this security feature? While quarters and dimes were, at times, made from silver, the smaller-denomination coins have generally had a melt value too small to warrant tinkering with their edges.

Bonus fact : In the late s, coin clipping was used as the pretext for a rarely told incident of government-driven anti-Semitism.